


in which lena luthor learns to grieve

by sapphic_luthor



Category: Supergirl (TV 2015)
Genre: F/F, Lena Luthor Knows Kara Danvers Is Supergirl, Post-Crisis on Infinite Earths Crossover Event (CW DC TV Universe), SuperCorp, just... really needed these two idiots to talk to one another, kara danvers: too pure for words but has had it up to HERE with this shit, lena luthor: sad repressed lesbian, there’s allusion to a major character death but it’s CoIE so nobody’s REALLY dead u feel me
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-30
Updated: 2019-12-30
Packaged: 2021-02-27 11:28:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,550
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22036309
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sapphic_luthor/pseuds/sapphic_luthor
Summary: Lena’s hands have not stopped shaking since she returned to this Earth.She watches the wine shudder in the glass she’s holding and tries to will it still. She drinks white for the first time in years, because her favorite reds remind her too much of blood now.
Relationships: Kara Danvers & Lena Luthor, Kara Danvers/Lena Luthor, Kara Danvers/Lena Luthor/Supergirl
Comments: 30
Kudos: 567





	in which lena luthor learns to grieve

She sags onto her couch, makes an effort not to look around her apartment. It’s all clean whites and modern grays, but it reminds her of sanitized hospital rooms and corporate corner offices in skyscrapers. This place-- the place she knows she’s supposed to label “home”-- is devoid of life. Up until tonight, she has not allowed this to hurt. But right now, bruised and exhausted after everything she’s survived, some small part of her craves comfort.

She’s been existing in a suspended state of professionalism for longer than she can remember, saying the words that she knows are expected of her.

 _We appreciate your cooperation,_ to the scientist at a local lab; _You’re fired, please collect your belongings,_ to a former L-Corp board member; _We won’t be needing your services anymore,_ to the security contractor.

Until it had become something more real.

It’s _I miss you,_ and _please keep in touch,_ in Sam’s voicemail, it’s _Maybe_ on the RSVP to Jack’s wedding. It’s _I love you_ at her mother’s grave.

And then the Crisis begins, and her words take on a depth that she isn’t ready to understand, and isn’t strong enough to fight against.

It’s _You’re going to be okay,_ to Alex, as Lena presses her palms against the bullet wound in the agent’s bicep and waits for DEO backup to arrive.

It’s _We couldn’t have done this without you,_ to Brainy, when he pulls data from the edges of modern knowledge and bumps their chances of success from 14% to 76%.

And then, suddenly, and without warning, it’s:

 _Stay with me,_ to Kara’s limp body, draped across her legs. _Supergirl, you have to stay awake._ And then, _You can’t leave,_ one hand cradling a limp jaw, fingers pressed softly from Supergirl’s ear to chin.

When it becomes clear that she won’t wake, when her heart has stopped beneath Lena’s palm, it’s broken sobs and a struggle to breathe and _Kara. Kara, it’s okay, please, please please wake up, please,_ and Lena doesn’t even know who she’s begging to. It’s breath stuttering in lungs and _You can’t leave me,_ and _I need you,_ whispered through tears into the soft of Kara’s hair. Into the ears of a dead girl.

And then Supergirl is gone, Kara is dead--

Lena’s eyes shut hard, and she reaches for her purse, pulling her phone from inside.

She hits send before she realizes the enormity of what she’s done, and then regret hits her square in the chest and leaves her breathless. The blue of the hastily-typed message stares back at her, a glaring monument of her weakness:

**Are you there**

She’d sent it in a blind panic, all unsteady hands and memories of death, and Lena knows— _she knows_ —- she’s not going to be able to take this back. The indicator that Kara is typing appears before Lena can even lock her phone.

**Yes**

And then, less than a second later:

**Hi**

And then, after a pause:

**Is everything okay?**

Lena’s thumbs move toward the keyboard, but she catches herself before they make contact. She _hates_ it, hates how her body reacts to the thought of Kara before her brain does, hates that her hands imagine words like _not really_ and _are you?_ and _i’m sorry_ while Lena’s still trying to wrap her head around the fact that this is the first interaction she’s had with Kara in weeks that didn’t begin with yelling.

In the end, she locks her phone, pours herself too much wine, and hopes that Kara will ignore the message.

She drinks.

She knows that Kara is across the city somewhere, biting at the tip of her thumbnail and waiting nervously for a response-- any response-- confirming that Lena’s okay. She takes a bigger sip, cringes through the bite of the extra-dry wine, and doesn’t think about it.

-

Lena’s hands have not stopped shaking since she returned to this Earth.

Time has bent and folded in on itself; alternate Earths have intertwined fingers and danced among one another, and she’s done her best to keep cold and impartial and logical, because somebody had to. Because she’s more than willing to save them all-- she always has been, hasn’t she?-- but these are not her friends anymore. Saving people leaves no room for error and no room for distraction. If she had allowed herself to trip and fall into memories of tipsy game nights and bad trivia at Noonan’s, she may have never found her way back out. She may not have been able to remain impartial, and make the tough calls that nobody else seemed capable of making. They might not have all survived.

(Technically, they didn’t all survive.)

(She doesn’t think about this.)

She watches the wine shudder in the glass she’s holding and tries to will her hand still. She drinks white for the first time in years, because her favorite reds remind her too much of blood now.

-

It’s nearly silent, but she still hears it when Supergirl lands on the balcony.

This is something that Lena will not explore the implications of: that she’s inadvertently trained her ears to recognize the soft sound of boots touching down. The way her heart lets out the smallest of breaths, thinking something like _oh,_ like _it’s okay now._ And it isn’t, not anymore, but the memory of comfort is hard to shake.

“Lena?” Kara’s voice, not Supergirl’s. Lena can’t decide if this hurts more, or less.

“I was hoping you wouldn’t come,” Lena doesn’t stand from her seat on the couch, doesn’t look up when she says it. She means for it to sound bitter, but her voice rings hollow instead.

A moment passes, and Lena absently raises her wine glass to her mouth. It’s all a performance: the pressing of the chilled glass to her lips, the curling of her wrist around the stem. She knows Kara is watching her, but Lena dutifully plays the part of ignorance. It’s easier to do this dance, to pretend that there’s not a thick silence between them waiting to ignite blue and burn them both. She sips and cradles the glass against her chest, keeping her eyes trained forward.

“You didn’t respond,” Kara replies, and the note of worry is definitely there. When it becomes clear that Lena isn’t going to acknowledge her, Kara tries, “Are you okay?”

And at that, Lena looks finally looks up.

Her gaze flicks toward Kara, just for a second, and the ice-blue of the blonde’s eyes makes Lena feel sick. She takes a deep breath in, and focuses on quelling the rising tide of memories in her chest, because she hasn’t looked Kara in the eyes since the morning Supergirl died in her lap. She’s worked hard not to think about that moment: Kara bleeding out in her hands, Kara’s eyes, and open and empty and refracting the soft green light of kryptonite.

“Lena?” Something in her face must have given her away, because Kara’s voice is colored with concern now. She steps toward Lena without thinking, outstretching her hand to touch it to Lena’s arm in an attempt at comfort, but Lena starts, jumps hard just before Kara’s fingers make contact, and pulls away abruptly.

“Don’t,” Lena snaps sharply as she stands from her seat on the couch. She hates the way Kara freezes on the spot, the way she can hear Kara’s breath hitch in her throat as she swallows whatever words she wants to say— Protest? Apology? Confession?

“Okay,” Kara breathes slowly. Several long seconds pass and it’s apparent that she’s working to school her face, fighting her own instincts in order to keep her body still and her hands at her sides. “You’re still mad.”

She says it more to herself than to Lena, like she’s trying to work through a particularly difficult problem and listing the known facts might help her solve it. She says it like it’s something waiting to be picked apart and untangled, and that sends fury rocketing through Lena’s veins.

“Still _mad?_ ” Lena blinks, and in an instant, the anger is tangible. She grabs it with both hands and uses it to ground herself, because this is something familiar: she knows how to weaponize this. Rising to her full height, she channels the version of herself that commands boardrooms and emasculates entitled billionaires. “You think I’m _still mad,_ like it’s something that I’m going to just move past?”

Kara, to her credit, looks appropriately apologetic. “No, I’m not saying that you should--” She starts to protest, but Lena’s not finished.

“Is that what you’ve been doing? Waiting for me to get over it? Waiting for the moment that I’ve decided to forgive you, so you could fly in, comfort me, and what? Act like nothing’s changed? Like things are normal?” Her voice hardens as she continues, and she clutches at the anger like it’s the last lifeline she has. The vulnerability that had led her to send the text is gone now, hidden under a layer of false confidence so thick that she doesn’t even see the version of herself that broke so disastrously she had _texted Kara_. She thinks of Lillian as she spits her next words. “And just how long were you hoping the whole ordeal would take, Supergirl? A week? A month? Would you like me to get my assistant to put something on the calendar for you?”

Kara’s still looking at her, eyes wide and open and shining with something that looks like an apology but reads like pity. “It’s not like that,” she pleads. “I’m not asking you to forgive me right now, I just want…” She flounders for a second, eyes darting around the room like the thought she’s grasping for might be hidden among the minimalist decor. “I’m just trying to understand.” Kara says it with a softness cultivated by genuine compassion, and Lena hates her for it.

“There’s nothing to understand.”

“Lena, please,” Kara starts, and she sounds tired.

“Please _what,_ Kara?” It isn’t until she leans down to set her wine glass on the table that Lena realizes she’s just called her _Kara_ instead of _Supergirl._ For a second time tonight she’s allowed her mask to slip, and the realization edges her voice closer to exhaustion than ire. “I don’t know what else you want from me.”

“You,” Kara says it like it’s the most obvious thing in the world, and it sends something dangerous blooming in Lena.

She shouldn’t ask what that means. She won’t, because it doesn’t matter.

Because she hates Kara. Because she could never trust the woman in front of her again, and because this is broken beyond repair and she doesn’t want to fix it, anyway. Right? And this is how her brain rationalizes it. This is the conclusion that logic brings her to.

What her heart pushes for, and what her lips betray her and say, far too quietly, is “What do you mean?”

“Lena, you’re… I need you.” Kara has seen Lena soften and takes the opportunity to step closer as she speaks words that rest their fingertips along the edges of Lena’s heart, tentative and gentle. “I don’t-- I don’t know how to do this. Without you.”

Lena is frozen in place, eyes locked on an empty point over the blonde’s shoulder, because the thought of even meeting Kara’s eyes right now makes her knees feel weak. 

_I need you._

Lena’s thoughts start curling in on themselves and her breath comes shorter and then Kara’s getting closer and closer, and all she can make sense of through the fog is, _She can’t be doing this. Not now._ Lena blinks slowly, willing her breathing to remain normal as Kara approaches from the edges of her vision. She feels pieces of her anger falling away, feels the gentle reach that her heart does toward Kara like a flower toward sunlight, and for a moment, she thinks that maybe this is it. Maybe this is the moment where they make sense of the nebulous game they’ve been playing since the moment they met, because Lena’s not sure of the rules anymore, and--

“Lena…” Kara says softly, reaching out again as she takes the last few steps forward. Her fingertips catch Lena by the elbow, and Lena lets them. “I can’t lose you. You’re my best friend.”

_Best friend._

_Her best friend._

The words branch through Lena like broken fingers of lightning strike, and all at once everything around her falls away. Ice slips into her veins and a sick kind of calm washes over her. She straightens her back, hard and unforgiving, and allows herself to be swallowed by a familiar detachment. When she speaks, the air chills between them.

She turns toward Kara, putting them face to face for the first time since the blonde landed on her balcony, and delivers her words slowly and carefully, meeting Kara’s eyes directly. “If you expect me to believe we’ve ever been friends, you’re even more of a fool than I am.”

Kara reels back like she’s been slapped. Lena doesn’t react. She’s fallen too far into this box to feel regret, even when Kara’s eyes well up and threaten to spill. She delivers her final blow like a blade to the jugular, and the worlds almost don’t hurt as they leave her lips. “You mean nothing to me, Kara.”

It should be satisfying, to watch Kara’s body tense as though she’s been physically wounded, it _should_ be, but something small in Lena’s chest breaks. She ignores it, reaches for her wine glass and downs the remainder in one pull. Tonight can end, the break can be clean, and when she turns on her heel she expects—hopes— that Kara will leave, all kicked-puppy and broken hope. Instead, what she hears is:

“Fuck you, Lena.”

That stops Lena short. This is new.

They’ve had this conversation before, always Lena full of pain and rage, and Kara apologetic and aching. But this— Kara’s anger— is something that Lena doesn’t know what to do with.

Her confidence stumbles, and all she can manage is, “Excuse me?”

“If you want to stand here and act like the last three years meant nothing, fine. But _you_ sent me that text tonight. You’re a liar too.” There’s strength in Kara’s tone that Lena hasn’t erected the right defenses for, and she feels her façade begin to crack at its foundation. Panicked, she sinks her teeth into the only thing she knows.

“ _I’m_ a liar?” She says, whipping around to face the accusation. “Are you kidding? You lied to me, for _years_ , about _everything,”_ She starts taking commanding steps toward the blonde, but her voice raises beyond her control and the veneer of calm breaks off with each footfall. “I don’t even know who the fuck you are.”

Kara’s arms are crossed in front of her, and Lena wants to reach out and tear them apart, bury claws into Kara’s skin and shred the smugness in her posture with her bare hands.

“And I’ve apologized. I know I was wrong.” Kara’s taken on Supergirl’s pose now, feet apart, back straight, radiating power. Lena could almost believe it, if it weren’t for the sheen of tears Kara was clearly fighting back. “But if you refuse to believe that anything between us was genuine, you’re not just lying to me, you’re lying to yourself. And that’s worse.”

It breaks Lena.

She explodes, advances on Kara in a whirlwind, and she’s yelling again before she realizes it.

“You think that’s worse? You have no idea what it’s like, Kara! To lose everyone _,_ to have absolutely nobody left! You have Alex, and Eliza, and Clark, but I have—“ She’s working _hard_ not to cry now, a finger pointed accusingly at Kara, words coming in shouts between angry gasps. “You have people that love you,” Her voice breaks on the word _love_ , and she tries to push past it, but the first tear slips down her cheek. “I have nobody.”

Pain ripples across Kara’s face, and when she answers, she’s so quiet that Lena almost doesn’t hear her. “You don’t believe that,” she whispers, and the blue of her eyes falters under her own welling tears.

Lena’s feels the sting at the back of her throat, feels her face begin to crumble, and she realizes that she’s finally lost whatever tenuous grasp she thought she had. She opens her mouth to get the last empty accusations out before her tears start falling in earnest, but then Kara reaches forward and grabs the hand that Lena had been pointing at her and pulls it to her body. She flattens it against the center of her chest, and covers Lena’s palm gently with her own. 

“You don’t believe that,” Kara repeats, staring directly into Lena’s eyes.

A choked sob catches in Lena’s throat, and she can’t pull her eyes away from where Kara’s hand envelops her own. She stares at their point of connection, and it doesn’t escape her notice that she’s got her hand pressed directly to the place where Supergirl’s Kryptonian symbol would be, if she were in suit. It plucks at something raw in Lena’s soul. All of the hugs, all of the gentle touches, all of the time they’ve spent together over the years, and yet-- this moment, with Kara’s hand burning hot against her own and Lena’s fingertips pressed flat against Kara’s breastbone-- this feels like something bigger.

A pulse beats beneath her palm, and memories of death come back in heavy waves. She doesn’t have the strength to fight them.

_“Lena, I need you tell me where you are.” Alex’s voice cuts in, slow and patient in her ear._

_“I’m— I don’t know which Earth.” Her response comes fast, because she’s still frantically searching the aftermath of the attack, and then: Lena sees the royal blue of the suit. Panic balloons in her chest and she breaks into a run. Alex is speaking again, saying something that is probably reasonable and logical, but Lena doesn’t hear it. She trips to a stop over a crumpled body and when her eyes focus, she feels like she’s going to black out._

_“Lena? Lena!” Alex is in her ear again, but now she’s yelling._

_When Lena opens her mouth, all that comes out is, “She’s here.” Her voice breaks on the last word in a way that makes Alex go silent. “Alex, she’s not moving—“_

“Lena.”

She lets out the breath she hadn’t realized she was holding and looks up toward the woman calling her name. She finds Kara searching her face, and when their eyes meet, Lena knows it’s all over.

“You were gone,” is all Lena manages to choke out, and then she’s collapsing into Kara’s arms, broken beneath a devastation that’s been weighing on her bones since the moment she pulled the trigger on her brother. It’s violent and it’s ugly and her mind blanks as she comes entirely untethered, but Kara just loops her free arm firmly around Lena and holds her like she’s something to be saved.

“I’m not anymore,” Kara replies, her own voice thick with tears. “I’m okay.” She presses gently against the hand still trapped between them, holds it there for a moment as her heart beats solidly through them both. “Do you feel that? I’m here, Lena. I’m alive.”

The fingers of Lena’s free hand claw at the fabric of Kara’s shirt, holding her with the desperation of something lost. “How can I trust that? How can I know that you won’t--” her breath catches in her throat and she lets it, because saying the words out loud might cleave her open and leave her like that, exposed to the cold air of Kara’s mortality. It’s a wound she doesn’t know that she will heal from once, let alone twice.

For a moment, Kara doesn’t answer, just pulls her closer, rubs comforting circles on her back and tries to hold them both steady as Lena shakes in her arms. Kryptonian whispers of _Forgive me_ ghost against Lena’s neck and strong fingers tangle into dark hair, and Lena has to press her face to Kara’s throat to hold back a fresh wave of tears.

They stay like that for longer than Lena knows, until her breaths begin to come more evenly, and exhaustion pulls at her bones.

“I’m sorry,” Lena breathes it softly, lets her eyes fall closed and presses her nose into the soft hollow where Kara’s neck meets her jaw, and then a strong hand between them is pulling at her own, turning Lena’s palm outward and intertwining their fingers. 

She hears _it’s okay, Lena, it’s okay,_ feels the breath of it against her earlobe, but apologies won’t stop tumbling from her lips. They come in a string, looped among one another like they’ve been fighting for a way out. The vein has finally opened and Kara’s embrace is the first thing that’s made Lena feel safe in months. Tears are still slipping from her eyes but Kara’s hands are warm and her heartbeat is strong and she’s alive, she’s alive, she’s alive, that’s the only thing that matters. And then she’s murmuring desperations against Kara’s neck: _please_ and _I’m so sorry,_ and _you can’t leave again_ and then: _I love you_.  
  


**Author's Note:**

> i had an idea for where this was going to go but then it veered off the rails and started barreling toward something akin to a character study and honestly who am i to question the whim of the cosmos when it pushes me toward lena luthor?
> 
> -
> 
> i'm on tumblr at [sapphic-luthor](www.sapphic-luthor.tumblr.com), feel free to hit me up at any given time to discuss how bad lena just needs a goddamn hug


End file.
